Good Friday felt like a good day to buy some fish. A brief conversation overheard whilst queuing outside Southern Head, our excellent local fishmongers; teenage daughter meeting her mother, “what did you buy Mum? Did you buy some fish”. Mother, “Well I was in the fishmonger, so there’s a fair chance……”.

The Government’s Race Commission has just published a report that says our standards of race relations should be a model for the rest of the world. Needless to say it hasn’t taken long for the ethnic minority leaders to pour scorn and abuse on the Commission’s findings. Sadly, it’s typical of so many proclamations in this country. We have “the best police force in the world”, our “Armed Forces stand comparison with anyone”, our “teachers and universities are world class”, “the NHS is as good as any health service anywhere”. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a little positivity and fluffing ourselves up to boost morale, but sadly it’s all too often complete bollocks, if you’ll excuse the vernacular. I have had rather more first hand experience of the NHS recently than I would like and have seen for myself how flawed it is. In saying this I don’t wish to demean the individual doctors, nurses and others who work in our overstretched hospitals and medical centres. For the most part, they are dedicated and caring people who give their all. But we are in the dark ages compared with a number of other countries to my certain knowledge and maybe quite a lot others. One simple example is blood testing. I have been visiting South Africa for twenty years and practically every year I’ve consulted Dr Lawrence Retief, a functional medicine specialist whose aim is to prevent disease and illness, not cure or manage it. To achieve this he requires a mass of detailed blood tests and has very specific parameters for each one that are rather more exacting than those provided by the laboratories. There are two main labs operating throughout the country and whatever conurbation you are in, be it Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban or elsewhere, there will be a drawing centre within a few miles of you, if not closer. You can walk in without a booking, get the bloods drawn, and the results will be with your doctor the next day, or the day after at the latest. There is a charge but it’s modest and affordable for most people. Compare that with my recent experience in this country, where just finding a private lab isn’t easy. Dr Retief asked me to get two very specific and important tests done relating to my recent heart attack. I had to drive for nearly an hour to get the samples taken which cost £30 just for the “drawing”. It was a further £170 to get the tests done, which would have cost a third of that in SA. One of the tests (which the NHS doesn’t consider important!) was so badly handled that the result was invalid and I had to be refunded. The other one couldn’t even be done by the laboratory in Leicestershire and the sample had to be sent to Germany, a country that is so far ahead of us in many ways it’s scary. Medicine and medical systems in South Africa, Germany and I suspect America are dramatically better than what’s available here. We can talk the talk as much as we like but something very radical needs to happen before we can genuinely walk the walk.

There’s a very small paragraph in today’s Times reporting the fact that the Chinese Air Force is flying almost daily missions to test out Taiwan’s air defences, raising the possibility that a more serious conflict may not be too far away. It’s a frightening prospect. China has been doing more than just sabre rattling in the region for many years and has now built up significant and sophisticated air, land and sea forces. As far as I’m aware, nobody is threatening to invade or attack China so it prompts the question; “why?”. Back in the ’70s I was supposed to be something of a specialist in Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare or NBC as it was universally know. I recall being shown a film at the NBC School at Winterbourne Gunner of the Chinese Army doing their NBC training. It showed tens of thousands of soldiers on horseback wearing World War II style gas masks and charging with sabres drawn. It was hysterically incongruous and caused a good laugh. Nobody will be laughing now. Should China finally decide to “reclaim” Taiwan by force, what will America and the rest of the world do? What can they do? China will be banking that the answer is nothing and I have a nasty feeling they might be right, certainly militarily.

That’s all rather heavy stuff for Good Friday. I wonder what the good Lord thinks about it all? His Creation is looking distinctly unstable just now. Hopefully his sacrifice won’t ultimately prove to have been in vain. Enjoy the day of Resurrection with an overdose of Cadbury’s creme eggs and perhaps a glass or two of something stronger than water, now that Lent is over…….(that’s another debate; does it officially end today or on Easter Sunday?).

Whilst checking out my hill climbing ability on two wheels the other day, I circumnavigated Royal Eastbourne Golf Club and was amazed to see the fairways full of people walking, some with dogs in tow. Amazed because golf clubs are closed during lockdown, with the wielding of clubs and smiting of little white balls strictly verboten. What ludicrous rules, when the mental and physical benefits of playing golf are so great and can be so safely achieved. What’s the difference between friends walking together and friends walking together whilst playing golf? Hopefully, the eventual inquiry into how the Government did, might highlight what a bad decision it was to shut down all sport.

I wrote about sporting statistics recently and we had a classic example in the second ODI against India on Friday, of the difference between 99 and 100. Batting second, England were racing to victory thanks to an exhilarating opening partnership between Jason Roy and Johnny Bairstow and then some unbelievably destructive hitting from Ben Stokes. Having reached 50 in quick time, Stokes went to 99 in another eleven balls, with six 6’s. (10 overall). On the twelfth ball he gloved an attempted pull to the wicketkeeper, when one more run would have seen him record the third fastest 100 by an Englishman in fifty over international cricket. He walked off, head bowed, furious and disappointed, despite having just played an innings of power, brilliant inventiveness, sustained aggression, with extraordinary hand/eye coordination and more than a glimpse of sheer genius. It had got England so far ahead of the required run rate that it would have been almost impossible for them to lose. It was a fantastic contribution to the team’s win but will probably only be remembered by those that saw it; the record books will not reflect it. Just one more run needed…..

Stokes’s feeling of disappointment is akin to the golfer who has just shot 61, having three putted the 18th to miss out on the magical 59 and, despite leading the tournament by four shots, feels he has missed out on what might be his only chance to enter the record books as one of the handful of golfers who have broken 60. In both cases, the disappointment tends to be fairly short-lived when they realise what they have actually achieved.

There have been a number of accusations of stupidity and greed flashing around Westminster recently, but surely there’s nothing to compare with Major General Nick Welch, who gained £48,000 fraudulently by fiddling his expenses to pay for his children to go to boarding school. His deceit was uncovered thanks to a neighbour, a colonel, reporting him. The subsequent Court Martial sentenced him to two years in prison, with a retrospective dishonourable discharge from the Army. Unsurprisingly, he was instantly dismissed from his civilian job as well. One of the very first pieces of formal advice that I was given when I first joined the RAF was DON’T EVER fiddle your expenses. When claiming things like mileage allowance it would be so easy to add on a few pounds here and there but if ever you are caught it will be an instant Court Martial and dishonourable discharge. I would like to think that I am honest enough that I wouldn’t have done it anyway, but I took the warning so seriously that I reckon I left after thirteen years, being owed hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. I suppose the unfortunate message is that if you’re going to cheat, cheat big! Jeopardising your career for anything less than a few million simply isn’t worth it. Which makes Mr Welch’s transgression seem very stupid indeed. No doubt he is overwhelmed with regret.

A couple of instances in my subsequent career served to highlight the value of that advice. On one occasion I was paid twice for the same work and I suspect the error would probably have gone unnoticed had I not highlighted it and returned the £4,500 that would have been very welcome at that stage. (Well at any stage come to that). I was never thanked for my honesty, despite it probably saving the accounts clerk considerable embarrassment. More recently, when we were in Hong Kong, I used to organise all my own flights and travel with a “one man band” travel agent in HK. He would then submit invoices to London, who generally were irritatingly slow to pay, despite being a large, international company. One invoice was for $HK 40,000, about £4,000. Someone in accounts very generously paid him £40,000! You would think that such a large sum might have rung a few bells when paying for only a couple of flights. To his eternal credit (and that was a big enough sum to have made quite a difference to him) he immediately told me and the London office and returned the money. I never told anyone in London and I imagine the clerk responsible (and I know who it was) was eternally grateful that her significant error was never exposed, but again we heard not a beep of gratitude. Interestingly, near the end of my twenty seven years with the company, a production manager tried to reclaim £200 from me that they felt they had overpaid. When I pointed out that in fact there were at least five other occasions where I had been underpaid by £200 and they probably actually owed me about £1,000, I never heard another word!

The Spring Equinox. The astronomical first day of Spring. The day which will henceforth be known in English sporting circles as the I’s of March. The day when India and Ireland gave us a sound thrashing at cricket and rugby respectively. A day that started with so much hope and expectation and ended with wringing hands and a depressing shaking of the head. The sun shone on another relatively balmy day to welcome in Spring, the fruit trees and shrubs are budding, the grass is growing and the ugly winter moss is turning brown and black after a vindictive visit from Green Thumb. All is well in the garden; but England lost!

Sunday Morning.

The day dawned bright and sunny. Yesterday’s aberrations seemed a distant memory as I set forth with wife and daughter to smite a tennis ball for the first time since lockdown and heart misfunctions brought an unwanted halt to proceedings. It was pleasantly surprising how well everything appeared to work, although there’s still time for delayed repercussions! However, my concentration on court was disturbed by some squawkingly loud gulls circling overhead, but much more interestingly above them, at about 2,000 feet, there was an impressive dogfight taking place with squadrons of black birds, rooks I think, swooping and rolling in formations of threes mainly, but with the odd pair, giving a very passable imitation of the Battle of Britain. At 2,000 feet they looked about the same size as Spitfire’s and Messersmitts at 10,000 feet and it really wasn’t hard to imagine them locked in deadly aerial combat. They really did seem to be playing the dogfight game with formation leaders and their wingmen flying in tight groups, engaging the enemy and then breaking off as more appeared. There must have been about thirty of them and the action lasted for some time, before suddenly the whole Wing formed up and disappeared off over The Downs as if they’d either run out of fuel or 12 Group HQ had redeployed them to tackle another unseen force hurtling in over the Channel to drop their deadly bombs. I was at School in Ely when they filmed The Battle of Britain and we regularly watched the dogfights taking place overhead. Today’s action looked remarkably similar. I’d love to know what they were up to.

I’m finding it quite hard to concentrate with the background noise of a football being bounced and dribbled incessantly up and down the corridor by a fifteen year old who is becoming ever more football obsessed. It leaves me in a quandary. The sound is akin to water torture, but it does mean he’s on his feet and not slobbing in a chair, glued to a screen. I fear extreme tolerance is required on my part, just as it was for my parents who nobly put up with the sound of a tennis ball being bashed against the side of the house for hour after interminable hour, day after day throughout the summer holidays. The good news for them was that I spent two thirds of the year away at boarding school; what blessed relief! I do recall my father objecting but mother came down on my side. As patience wears particularly thin I fear there is only one solution; don the lycras and take to the saddle. Mrs T is happily (?) weeding, but there’s nothing left for me to do in the garden.

The worst part is, Oliver is an Arsenal fan!

St Patrick’s Day. Always a memorable date in my calendar. It was 17th March 1990 that I got married for the first time at the age of 39. I’d survived that long as a bachelor but a holiday romance heli-skiing in the Cariboos in Canada’s Rocky Mountains proved my undoing! I spent my final night of freedom in the glorious Chateau Lake Louise, an hour’s drive North of Banff in Alberta, with a small group of friends. It made for a memorable transition into the married ranks. Patti was a top skier who worked for a heli-skiing company called CMH in winter and for the Canadian Parks Service as a Ranger in the summer. What a life she had until I came along and wrecked it! She lived with her sister and brother in law in Banff, which is where we got married. Banff is a stunning mountain town. Hopefully it has recovered from Patti and I driving down the Main Street in a large old, bright orange, slightly dishevelled pick-up truck with horns blaring, a symphony of tins rattling along behind and much shouting and screaming. We spent our wedding night in a log cabin on a camp site that had been well and truly “doctored” by friends and family. The clingfilm over the lavatory bowl proved to be a particularly effective man trap. We drove outside the Park to nearby Canmore for our Wedding breakfast the following day. Patti was an outstanding cross- country skier as well as a downhiller and she’d decided that we should ski the 18 kilometres back to Banff to work off the previous forty eight hour’s indulgences. I had done a little langlaufing in the Army so had a vague notion of what was involved but hadn’t prepared myself, mentally or physically, for the challenge presented by the warm weather. Waxing cross country skis correctly for the conditions is absolutely crucial so that you can get purchase on the snow when you push forward but also so that you can slide and glide over the snow without sticking. When the snow gets very soft and wet there’s only one wax to use and that’s Klister, which is so sticky it can grip the wet snow. But we’d decided that as a novice, I would use skis with a herringbone base that don’t require wax and which work reasonably well in most conditions; except slush. It was a glorious, piping hot day and the 18 kms took forever as I took one step forwards and two back. The new Mrs T paid for that for weeks to come! We spent our honeymoon driving down through the Big Sky country of Montana and Idaho, stopping off to ski as we went, before spending a few glorious days extreme skiing at Jackson Hole in Wyoming. I’ve just come across an old cowboy hat that we bought there, which has been rotting in the garage for years. It finally seems to suit it’s ageing owner and is now getting a regular outing on the streets of Eastbourne, which has precisely nothing in common with the spectacular mountain setting of the Wild West town of Jackson Hole in the Grand Tetons.

Surely the only other event of interest to take place on 17th March was the arrival of Dennis the Menace. It was on this day exactly seventy years ago that he made his debut on the pages of The Beano. I made my earthly appearance a couple of months later and was able to emulate Dennis’s activities on many occasions in the coming years. How lucky we were to be able to enjoy the innocent delights of those wonderful comics, The Beano, The Dandy, Topper, The Eagle et al and what an impression they made on young minds. Sixty years on the characters and stories are still fresh in what’s left of the mind. Will today’s youth have such memories of their interminable video games I wonder? Life seemed so much simpler then….

Can there ever have been a more inappropriately named gentleman than England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Witty. The man with a slightly distorted face is about as funny as a grizzly with a headache. Just as the country was beginning to think that we could perhaps be about to enjoy a return to some sort of normality he ups and slams on the anchors, assuring parliament that we would risk another deadly spike and tens of thousand more “deaths” if we try to accelerate the very cautious easing of restrictions that he and his fellow experts have recommended. “Recommended” being the operative word. The trouble is it’s beginning to sound as though he is running the Country. I always thought advisers should advise and leaders lead; i.e. make the decisions.

If you listen to Radio 4 early in the morning you will be familiar with a brief slot when they tell you that “on this day in…..” and they then list a number of key historical moments, sometimes dating back centuries. This morning they mentioned that on this day in 1988 Prince Charles narrowly avoided death in an avalanche in Switzerland. It brought memories flooding back. I was skiing in Meribel that day when I heard the news. We were obviously delighted for the Prince but two companions weren’t so lucky. Patti Palmer-Tomkinson, a top skier, was badly injured but survived to tell the tale. Major Hugh Lindsay, the Queen’s Equerry, a 9th/12th Lancer, a truly top bloke and a great friend was killed instantly when a large slab of ice slammed into his head. The Swiss guide Bruno Sprecher had taken them on an off-piste route near Klosters that was in dangerous condition and they should never have been there, although reports afterwards suggested it was Charles who pushed them to go. Hugh had a lovely grace and favour apartment in St James’s Palace where he lived with his gorgeous girl friend of some duration, “Bumps”; you’d know why if you met her!. She was totally and utterly devoted to Hugh; he had that effect on people. He had that rare gift of being able to mix with princes and paupers with equal ease. One moment he would be holding The Queen’s handbag on a formal occasion, the next, playing football in Hyde Park with a group of strangers. It wasn’t unusual for various of the royal princesses to call him for a confidential chat, including the Princess of Wales who later became a great friend to Hugh’s widow, Sarah. Bumps was heartbroken and scarred for a long time when he broke up with her having fallen madly in love with Sarah (whose maiden name I forget), who worked in the Buckingham Palace Press Office. She was seven months pregnant when Hugh died. Diana had attended their wedding, a wonderfully happy occasion. His funeral at Sandhurst, with full military honours and attended by Prince Charles amongst others, was one of the most gut-wrenchingly awful days. Their daughter Alice was born a couple of months later, on 14th May. Coincidentally that’s my birthday too. Prince Charles is her godfather.

Possibly the biggest mistake the Princess of Wales made was her revelatory interview with Martin Bashir. Prince Andrew was generous enough to prove to all what a huge mistake it is to sell your soul to the media, but undaunted, Cringe and Ginge have now done the same. ( I can’t claim originality for that one!) I fear they will live to regret it, or at least Harry will. Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned principles of duty, loyalty and service? The Royal Family most certainly aren’t racist or bigoted, but parts of the media and particularly the tabloid press, clearly are.

Apparently “the whole of America” is shocked that the British Royal Family are racists. How ironic is that from a country that is probably more racist than anywhere else on earth! As a final thought, if I dislike Germans (I’m not saying I do), does that make me racist?

I have just walked past an old record shop (one that sells old records) called The Vinyl Frontier, that I’ve passed hundreds of times before without realising what an enterprising title it is. There was no sign of Captain Kirk or Mr Spock but they were probably in another galaxy, boldly going where no man/one/woman/transgender/genetically modified/LGBT/non-denominational has gone before. It does amaze and stupefy me sometimes how depressingly unobservant and thick I can be.

I have also just been going through a list of twenty two MCC Members who have put themselves forward for election by the 18,000 or so Members to fill three places on the new NomCo or Nominations Committee who will be responsible for selecting Members to serve on the main Club Committees. They have all written personal statements and recorded short videos explaining why they should be the one. It makes me feel very humble when you learn the extraordinary stories of so many of these volunteers. I used to think I had done quite a lot in life! It’s a hard choice selecting from the Generals, Q.C.’s, CEO’s, senior sports administrators and other high flying individuals. There is only one woman (if that’s an acceptable description?) on the list, so it will be interesting to see if she attracts a winning poll. She would seem to be well qualified.

At a much more mundane level you’ll be relieved to know that the Red Brick Road has been satisfactorily completed without any major damage to fruit tree roots and to the genuinely enthusiastic approval of Mrs T, which is the most important thing. There is the odd unevenness, which bears testament to the underlying problem, but it’s not enough to hamper smooth passage and in fact it’s a lot more even than most of Eastbourne’s pavements which have become reminiscent of a corrugated roof (wriggly tin as we called it in the Army), thanks to the spectacular avenues of Plane and other trees that line so many of the Town’s elegant boulevards. The new path has yet to pass the important test of bearing the weight of the John Deere without cracking or crumbling but I’m reasonably confident all will be well. The jungle that we inherited three years ago is not yet a rival to Kew Gardens but it is certainly now a very pleasant place to while away the long hours of sunshine that we will undoubtedly enjoy this summer…….

Talking of amazing men (retracing my steps somewhat), I’ve just read that Christopher Lee has died; not the actor but the BBC’s one-time Defence Correspondent. I got to know him well in the mid 80’s when I produced a defence magazine programme for BFBS wittily called Sitrep. (Military parlance for Situation Report). Chris was scarily bright with an extraordinary intellect for one who was expelled from school at 16, (seemingly a burnt down pavilion was involved) and ran away to sea. I always felt intimidated in his presence, but nonetheless greatly enjoyed his company. I was very much in the “makey learney” stage of my new career and learnt a huge amount from him and the late Peter Hobday, another BBC Presenter (Today and Newsnight amongst many programmes), who was always most generous with his time and advice. We enjoyed many good lunches together! Looking back on it, I was so green, I wonder what they must have really thought of me! Christopher’s obituary takes up a full page in The Times Register of 5th March and reveals a fascinating career and an extraordinary life well lived. He’s perhaps best known for a history series he wrote for BBC Radio called “This Sceptred Isle” (or This Sceptic isle as he liked to call it), but perhaps most remarkably of all he was invited by Emmanuel College, Cambridge to become its first quarter-centenary Fellow in contemporary history, a role he described as “earthly heaven”. Whilst there he played jazz trumpet and wrote scripts for The Archers. He was also an avid sailor, a Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve and a devoted cricket fan. His parents christened him Christopher Robin; they loved A.A. Milne. I wish I’d known that, it would’ve been fun teasing him.

I now feel even more humble.

Meteorologically Spring is sprung. It certainly feels like it with days of unbroken sunshine and nights of a gloriously bright snow moon illuminating our covidly dull lives, even if winter’s chill is still very evident. Having spent a weekend of hacking, slashing and pruning, the garden feels ready to burst into spectacular technicolour. I’d been a bit concerned about how I was going to reduce a rather large Smoke Bush that had become a Brobdingnag tree, back to Lilliputian proportions. I’ve had a chain saw for many years and despite a few close shaves have so far avoided any unintended amputations, but I knew this was going to be a tricky operation. By chance, the still unused scaffolding that is awaiting gutter repairers to do their work, has a loose heavy ladder that proved perfect for scaling the aforementioned Bush/tree. With guide ropes in place and a slightly reluctant wife as the puller, I was able to complete the felling operation almost perfectly, without slicing myself open or decapitating Mrs T. Sadly as the main part came down it tore some bark off the remaining stump so I’ve been forced to shorten that rather more than planned. In time, we hope, it will once again flourish as a beautiful bush, rather than a garden-dominating tree.

Talking of close shaves, are you an admirer of beards? I’ve never been a great fan personally, although I do think they look better on men than women, if I’m allowed to make such radical distinctions. I remember as a very young teenager inheriting beautifully tailored evening dress tails that had belonged to my Grandfather and being told that while fashions change, some things are timeless. The Oxford Bag style trousers would, I was assured, come back into fashion one day. I grew up in a clean-shaven era when facial hair was reminiscent of Edwardian times and seemed incredibly dated. How odd it was then, when young men and sportsmen in particular, started the bearded tendency again a few years ago, thinking they were trendy. I wonder whether Covid might bring a premature end to the trend? Have you noticed a new style developing; the Chin Mask? Now that face coverings are compulsory when shopping, it’s so much easier (especially if like me you wear glasses that steam up with your nose covered) to just lower the mask onto your chin when flitting between shops, rather than constantly donning and undonning the wretched thing. It also makes sipping coffee from your go-mug rather more pleasant and straightforward! But masks, especially when worn at half mast, can’t be particularly comfortable, with an enormous untended bush attached to your jowls. As masks are probably an unwanted but legally required fashion accessory for the foreseeable future, does this herald the end of facial hair? I haven’t checked as to whether GQ and other men’s mags are majoring on this issue, but if they’re not it’s surely only a matter of time…..what could be more important after all?

The sun still shines and a half-completed brick path awaits my attention. It will feature old red bricks rather than yellow ones, so sadly there’s little chance of bumping into Dorothy or the Tin Man as I complete my labours. I’ve been putting off further work because the intended route is criss-crossed with roots and I can’t decide which root or route is more important. To achieve a smooth pathway I need to dig down, which endangers the roots and their dependant apple trees and other shrubs, but undamaged roots will make for a most uneven route. Do you see my dilemma and why, without an obvious solution, I have been hesitating? Time to sally forth and meet this challenge head on. Wish me luck……

One Hundred and Eighty! A notable score if I was playing darts or “arrers” as we used to call them; three triple twenties, a maximum. Many a happy night has been spent with a pint in one hand, a quiver full of arrers in the other and some congenial company. In days of yore, practically every Public Bar in the land had a dart board as did many Officers’ Messes. Sadly they have largely been a victim of the gastro pub. Shame. In my old BBC Radio Sport days I went to the World Darts Championship when “the Crafty Cockney”, Eric Bristow MBE was king of the oche. Debate always raged as to whether it was a sport or not, but the atmosphere there was incredible in a dark, smoky, raucous, alcohol fuelled den of iniquity, where audience participation was de rigeur. The way the score caller would announce a maximum, WUUUNNN HUUUNDRED AND AAATTTEE, will remain with me for ever. The game also boasted one of the most iconic commentators in sport in the late Sid Waddell, who had more colourful and descriptive phrases than a Welsh coalminer. Bristow, five times a world champion, suffered in later years from a hideous malaise called “dartitis” which is a psychological problem rather like the “yips” in golf or indeed tennis where the server struggles to release the ball when tossing it up. In darts, you can’t release the arrer properly and it can just go anywhere. What a nightmare. I know the feeling, I’ve suffered from all three! It requires considerable mental gymnastics to overcome the block and many people never do.

There was an intriguing photo in The Times recently. It was the story of Facebook’s spat with Australia and it depicted a pasty-faced Mark Zuckerberg with a high forehead and closely cropped fringe looking either like an android out of Star Trek, or perhaps more malevolently, a Bond villain intent on global domination, that only 007 can prevent. On his shoulder (not literally of course), was The Cleggster, a patrician looking SIR Nick Clegg, the former MEP, MP, Liberal Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister who has seemingly sold his soul to the devil, no doubt for rather a lot of money. Am I alone in finding the whole Facebook/Zuckerberg thing a bit spooky? …..1984 and all that?

I have often wondered whether scaffolding wouldn’t be rather a good business to be in. Our tall, three storey house has suffered a gutter malfunction, having become blocked with organic material and finally shedding a two metre chunk of plastic half-pipe just outside our back door. Luckily no one was standing underneath at the time but the rainwater now cascades down the wall like a miniature Niagara Falls. Quite promptly the scaffolding men were in to efficiently erect their platform and there the noble structure has stood for a week or more, untroubled by human interest, awaiting the specialists who will hopefully fix the aforementioned gutter; eventually. Presumably (I’m only guessing) the scaffold company charges by the day? Easy money! A large hotel on the seafront burnt to the ground over a year ago, leaving a small section of facade that has been saved for posterity. A large area of scaffolding was put up to support that and some adjoining walls, since when, precisely nothing has happened. I’d love to know how much the scaffolders are earning for that! I think it’s what’s called “residual income”, the holy grail of investors and businessmen alike; or you could just call it money for old rope…..

As a brief addendum to my previous blog, I retraced my steps along the promenade today only to be met by the usual sights. The sea was a universally turgid grey, ruffled by the normal Sou’westerly blowing along the seafront at a steady fifteen knots or so, the energetic rollers breaking within feet of the sturdy seawall. Above, there was no sign of Sunday’s impressive aerial activity…..in fact there was hardly a seagull in sight. Where had they all gone? There were more pigeons and crows to be seen than gulls. What few there were occupied their normal perches atop street lamps; another oddity I’ve never really understood. As for the formatting starlings, not a murmur. Could any naturalist specialising in ornithology please enlighten me as to these weird goings on?

Meanwhile, I am reading a fascinating book called Eat to Beat Disease by Dr William Li, a medical doctor and scientist. It is a healthy tome (in size as well as content), but it makes for riveting reading. He talks about the body’s five pillars of defence: Angiogenesis, Regeneration (stem cells), Microbiome (the gut), DNA Protection and Immunity. Angiogenesis, a word I hadn’t come across before, defines the body’s ability to create new blood vessels to repair wounds and other damage. Antiangiogenesis is also important in preventing the body creating new blood vessels around cancer cells, which helps the baddies to grow; an excellent way of fighting cancer it seems. According to Dr Li, all of these defences can be dramatically emboldened by eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones. In general terms he favours the traditional Mediterranean diet, but there’s an awful lot more to it than that. It’s well worth a read. I am not his agent!

As part of my search for improved health and fitness my functional medicine doctor in South Africa (Dr Retief) asked me to get blood tests done to measure homocysteine levels and LDL small particles, a very specific test for bad cholesterol. This involved finding a private laboratory and travelling forty five minutes to a partaking chemist to get the blood drawn. The costs were exorbitant. £30 for the blood draw and over £180 for the two tests, which would have cost the equivalent of about £50 in SA, where we would have had the results back within two days, which I was assured by the lab would be the case here as well. Two days later I received the homocysteine result which indicated a level of 21.5, compared with the maximum recommended level of 15. Dr Retief prefers 6 or 7, so he immediately went into overdrive, with various solutions recommended, pending news of the LDL test. Eventually I phoned the lab to learn that “oh that test has to go to a lab in Germany and takes two weeks”! Why wasn’t I told of this? Oops. About ten days later I got the report, but when forwarded to Dr Retief it made no sense to him. Back to the lab. “We need more detail please, showing not just the levels but the appropriate ranges”. Abject apologies and a day or two later a fuller report arrived, as it should have done in the first place, they agreed. After all, I had paid over £100 for that test alone. The long and the short of it is that my LDL 7 Function (small particles) is just about normal, which means that concerns about too much LDL are overstated. Ok to come off the lifetime diet of statins then, as prescribed by the NHS, especially if I do all the right things with other supplements and diet. But what about the homocysteine? Such a high level can be very dangerous for heart disease apparently but can usually be rectified by upping the intake of Vitamin B12 and Folic Acid. As I eat enough broccoli to keep a market garden in business single-handed and my red meat consumption was more than adequate I couldn’t really understand the readings. Still, I learned that your local GP will inject Vitamin B12 if required. Upon consulting the said gentleman it transpires that the NHS doesn’t believe in testing homocysteine levels, (what!!?) he couldn’t trust my tests and so I would have to go in there to get more blood tests done specifically for B12, folate and haemoglobin levels. Those tests all came back as “normal” (nobody’s ever called me that!) and in fact the B12 reading was towards the top end. Mystified, I did some more reading and found in a scientific paper that blood drawn for homocysteine testing must be put on ice immediately and refrigerated until tested, as happens in SA, or readings will be much higher than they should be. I realised that my expensive blood had sat in an uncooled tube for four or five hours before being sent to the lab by post, where it would have spent about twenty four hours unrefridgerated until analysed. After further calls, I eventually got to speak to the MD of the lab who agreed this was all wrong, it was their fault, she was very sorry and would refund nearly half the total fee. I thanked her but was left with the dilemma of not knowing what the real situation is. Apologies for the rather lengthy description, but hopefully it’s interesting to see how far off the pace we are in this country in these matters compared with Germany, South Africa and I suspect the USA as well.

According to the BBC Gardener’s World magazine, now is a good time to relocate deciduous shrubs that are in the wrong place. Compared with Myanmar under it’s own version of lockdown, Arabian princesses locked in, Britain locked out and schools locked up, there’s something wonderfully grounding (excuse the pun) about worrying whether the forsythia should be repositioned five yards to the South. As the host of Gardener’s Question Time used to say on BBC Radio 4, “goodbye and good gardening”. ……….(we do have a beautiful camellia that’s now flowering handsomely, but in totally the wrong position….?)

With no automatic violin cases in evidence, just a loving wife cooking a scrumptious roast rib of beef for lunch, I sallied forth for a post prandial wander along the Prom to contemplate nature on my own and was confronted by an unusual sight. For a mile or so the air above was thick with thousands of seagulls, gliding, swooping and soaring with hardly a beating wing in sight. They were concentrated over the seafront, straying neither inland nor out to sea at heights from 100 to about 600 feet. Every now and then a group of twenty or thirty would dive down to the water’s edge as if spotting a tasty morsel, but they would linger only for a second or two before flapping madly back into the sky. Their behaviour was unusual as were the elements. The sea was a white, frothing maelstrom for a good hundred yards out to sea, whipped up by an untypical southerly onshore wind. I suspect it was this combination that was causing the rare aerial activity. It was as if they were all attempting to emulate Jonathan Livingstone as they vied for ‘Glider Pilot in Chief’ honours.

Further along the Front was a another delight of nature. Swirling and gyrating around their favourite landmark, the Golden Globe at the end of Eastbourne’s pier, a huge murmuration of starlings was showing off to the minimalist but intrigued crowd on their Sunday afternoon perambulations. It was a particularly active display, with small squadrons of birds joining the main formation on a regular basis as word got out that it was playtime. Looking like something between an amoeba under the microscope and a wobbly jelly, the form is ever-changing. Sometimes it goes from a tight ball into a long linear line-up darting off westwards and then changing rapidly back through one hundred and eighty degrees, throwing off a large group of tail-end Charlies, who then have to smoothly rejoin the master group. Normally in formation flying there is only one Leader, who is totally responsible for everything that happens; navigation, formation changes, heights etc etc. Where he goes the rest follow. But in a Murmuration everyone seem to be a leader! How they avoid multiple mid-air pile-ups is a complete mystery. Today’s display saw them going from skimming the wave tops to climbing into a tight, perfect, dark black ball like a UFO from outer space, before starbursting more dramatically than any fireworks.

One of the joys of living in Eastbourne is the ever-changing scenery, whether it be walking the dog on the beautiful Sussex Downs or breathing in the ozone-filled air down on the seafront. There’s no need to emulate Sir David Attenborough’s naturalist globetrotting when there is so much to see on one’s doorstep. Lockdown is tolerable for those of us lucky enough to be here, although one can but hope that the growing band of Tory MP’s who are campaigning for an imminent return to sanity/normality will have their way. There are only so many times we can enjoy a family game of Monopoly without somebody getting strangled. In hope, we have just booked a fortnight’s holiday in late June to the glorious Suffolk coast, not far from where my sister and I went to school many moons ago. Here’s hoping it happens…..